*****Official Toronto Blue Jays Thread Part 2*****

[Greg1983]

He might not be a backup if Kelly Johnson decides to walk and/or Yunel gets dealt.

Yunel's not getting dealt. And I'd rather have Hech as a starter than Aviles if Johnson leaves. Hoping we grab Johnson on another 1 year deal though with not much on the 2B market.

[DeeBO-]

yall too busy fapping to next years potential roster to come in here and post?

damn AA is such a BAWSE

[phoool]

I know theres a whole thread on this. but DAMNNNNNNNNNNNNN AA u got some nude photos of other GMs or something... what a trade!!

[Greg1983Returns]

See you *******s at the parade!

[Mac_xX]

Yunel's not getting dealt. And I'd rather have Hech as a starter than Aviles if Johnson leaves. Hoping we grab Johnson on another 1 year deal though with not much on the 2B market.

last post itt before the trade

i lold

[SportsMiscHOFer]

See you *******s at the parade!

Already booked my flight from Van City to Toronto for October.

We back baby!

[frankbink5]

A couple espn insider articles

Keith Laws article on the trade

The Blue Jays-Marlins trade, pending physicals, is a five-for-seven swap that sees the Jays getting Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes, Emilio Bonifacio and John Buck in exchange for prospects Jake Marisnick, Justin Nicolino and Anthony DeSclafani and big leaguers Henderson Alvarez, Jeff Mathis, Yunel Escobar and Adeiny Hechavarria. It's a huge deal in numbers and in its potential to impact the standings of two divisions in 2013, with the Jays poised to be the most relevant they've been in 20 years while the Marlins live down to the reputation the franchise acquired in 1997-98 and has deserved ever since.

The Blue Jays get a lot of impact talent in this deal, making them contenders (at least for the moment) in 2013 without substantially damaging their chances to contend in future years. Johnson is an ace when healthy, which he seldom is; he finished the year looking strong, back to 93-97 with a plus curveball and above-average slider again, and if he looks like that all year he could be worth 5 wins above replacement to a Jays team that hasn't had that guy since it traded Roy Halladay.
[+] Enlarge
Jose ReyesAP Photo/Matt SlocumJose Reyes is a major upgrade for the Jays.

Johnson tops the rotation ahead of Brandon Morrow, behind whom the Jays will slot Buehrle, a reliable innings-eater who reached 200 innings for the 12th straight season, but whose below-average fastball isn't an ideal fit for Toronto's homer-friendly home park. Even if he dips to just below league-average, the Jays desperately need the innings he'll provide, given the elbow plague that infected their rotation in 2012. If Johnson is healthy and Ricky Romero gets back to his old form, this will be one of the league's best rotations in 2013, although the probability of both of those things happening in one calendar year is not that high.

Reyes becomes the Jays' everyday shortstop, the best one they've had since Tony Fernandez left after the 1999 season. His 2011 walk year was built on a batting average he wasn't likely to see again, but the remainder of his skill set -- average defense at short, above-average running, good plate coverage, modest pop -- remains intact, and at shortstop that's going to be worth 4 to 6 wins over replacement, and a quick upgrade of about 3 over what the Jays got out of shortstop this past season.

They'll also get value from having Bonifacio as a supersub, a plus runner who can play six spots on the diamond, five of them well enough to handle on a part-time basis. Buck is a $6 million backup catcher, adding to Toronto's pile of catching while the Marlins get to dump a contract that was dumb the day that they gave it to him and looks just as bad now. He might be headed on to a third team, or could make it easier for the Jays to deal J.P. Arencibia and make room for catcher-of-the-future Travis d'Arnaud.

The lone negative for Jays fans is that the team has acquired a substantial amount of money owed, with Buehrle and Reyes both under contract beyond this year and possibly limiting the team's ability to make further moves this offseason or next. Buehrle is the biggest risk of the three major names coming back to fail to produce up to the level of his salary, although he happens to give the club the healthy/durable starter it desperately needed and might have had to overpay to get in free agency.

I'd offer my condolences to the Marlins' fans if only I could find them. Of all the players Miami got in return, only two stand out as guys the Blue Jays might someday miss, outfielder Marisnick and left-hander Nicolino.

Marisnick was the highest-rated Jays prospect coming into the 2012 season and had a solid first half in high Class A before struggling with his approach after a midseason promotion to Double-A. The tools are still there -- above-average runner, above-average arm, plenty of range for center, more raw power than in-game -- but that approach is becoming a greater concern as he gets older and it doesn't improve, especially when he's beatable both on breaking stuff and on hard stuff up or in. I also worry about the power not playing in games because he has virtually no load, so he doesn't get extended well enough before making contact, although that's something that could be tweaked. He's a strong prospect, but not as exciting as he looked 10 months ago.
[+] Enlarge
Yunel EscobarTom Szczerbowski/Getty ImagesEscobar's antics have now gotten him run out of Atlanta and Toronto.

Nicolino's stat line is a little misleading, as he's not a power pitcher but a finesse left-hander with an average fastball that touches 93 mph and a plus changeup. He can flat-out pitch, with poise and approach that belie his age, and an easy, repeatable delivery. He may not miss as many bats as he moves up the ladder and doesn't offer any projection, but lefties with feel and a good change can pitch toward the middle of a rotation for a long time.

Henderson Alvarez had a plus fastball and plus changeup when he was coming up in the Jays' system, but the fastball has backed off a little and he has been unable to keep his changeup down in the zone, while he has never developed an average breaking ball, all of which has dropped his outlook from potential No. 2 starter to probable reliever. The Marlins can and should give Alvarez another year or so in the rotation to see if any of those issues resolves with experience or a new coaching staff, but as it stands now he doesn't miss enough bats to be a major league starter.

Anthony DeSclafani is definitely a reliever, where he'll touch 95 but needs to get more consistent tilt on his slider; he's a strike-thrower who did get to refine his off-speed stuff somewhat this year as a starter in low-A.

Jeff Mathis has a career .256 OBP in more than1,500 plate appearances and is probably best not discussed any further.

Yunel Escobar is probably better known for his bad makeup than he is for his on-field skills and has now run himself out of two cities; he doesn't walk or hit for power and his only offensive production in Toronto came at home in the first half of 2011, but he makes enough contact and adds value with his glove to make him a 2-win player.

Adeiny Hechavarria is a 70 defender at shortstop (on the 20-80 scouting scale) both in glove and arm, and is never going to hit -- but replacement level at short right now is low enough that he could be a 2-win player, although one of these two guys has to move off short. Both were born in Cuba and may, in theory, appeal to Cuban-American Marlins fans who aren't thoroughly disgusted by the way the team's owners are running the franchise back into the subterranean hole out of which they originally crawled.

Those limicolous owners are the greatest joke of all in this deal, rooking Florida taxpayers for a publicly funded stadium, only to make one half-hearted attempt to fill it with a contending team, then surrendering after the season to return to their old business model, playing a skeleton-crew lineup while pocketing all of their revenue-sharing money. This isn't a bad baseball deal for Miami; it's not a baseball deal at all -- it's a boondoggle, perpetrated by owners who have pulled one stunt like this after another, with the implicit approval of the commissioner's office. It's time for baseball to rid itself of Jeff Loria and David Samson by any means possible. Miami, the state of Florida, and the sport in general will be better off without them.

[frankbink5]

Toronto now a good AL East bet
Dan Szymborski

The Toronto Blue Jays played the role of the forgotten team in the AL East in 2012. Three of the AL East teams were in the playoff hunt until the final week of the season while a fourth team, the Boston Red Sox, had a noted collapse. Toronto finished in that muddling middle, never good enough for people to follow the number in the games-behind column, but never bad enough to become a punch line as Boston did.

But that's all about to change, as the Jays have reportedly pulled off a blockbuster with the Miami Marlins, acquiring Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, John Buck and Emilio Bonifacio without giving up anyone who made a significant impact in 2012, and are now projected as a good bet to win the AL East in 2013.

Let's start with the premise that Toronto was much better than the 73-win team it was in 2012. The Jays got an amazing year out of Edwin Encarnacion, but outside of Encarnacion, the team wasn't the beneficiary of much in the way of good luck.

Whether it was Jose Bautista suffering an injury-plagued season or every other significant player underperforming expectations to some degree, from minor disappointment (Brett Lawrie) to disaster of galactic proportions (Ricky Romero), fortune frowned fairly regularly on the Jays. Now, not all of those players will improve in 2013, but as a group, they should improve enough simply from regression toward the mean to add a half-dozen games to the Jays' total, which brings them to 79 wins without factoring in any of the trade acquisitions.

I asked ZiPS to project Toronto's new acquisitions and the computer likes this trade as much as I do. Jose Reyes projects at .293/.343/.450 and 4.5 WAR in Toronto, which combined with a 2.4 WAR projection for Maicer Izturis over a full season as a starting second baseman, represents a four-win improvement over the projections for Yunel Escobar and Adeiny Hechavarria, who are reportedly headed to Miami in the trade.

Toronto's rotation looked weak at the start of the season and after a flurry of Tommy John surgeries -- hopefully the Jays got a group discount -- was a smoking wreckage by the end. Buehrle and Johnson project to add six wins above replacement, and considering they replace innings likely to be thrown by replacement-level (and possibly worse) pitchers, that's likely six net wins, not gross. If Romero's recent elbow surgery fixes him to the point where he can be just half the pitcher he was in 2011, a front four of Johnson, Buehrle, Romero and Brandon Morrow looks downright good.

Bonifacio and Buck don't provide the same big gains that the other three players in the trade bring, but Buck -- with a more typical season -- is worth a few runs more than J.P. Arencibia, and Bonifacio can fake enough positions to provide excellent value as a role player. The Jays still could use a second-tier left fielder to round up the lineup, but GM Alex Anthopoulos has plenty of time left to make an addition there.

So we're looking at a Jays team that projects to win about 90 games, and while Toronto's division rivals in Tampa Bay, Baltimore and New York all won 90 or more regular-season games in 2012, none of the three was an unstoppable juggernaut and all have real concerns heading into 2013.

The Yankees are a rapidly aging team, have holes in the outfield, at designated hitter and in the rotation, and with team management no longer willing to burn through cash faster than a trust-fund baby going on a four-day bender, they're going to be hard-pressed to fill all of those holes without also blowing past the luxury-tax threshold. And don't forget that Robinson Cano is a free agent in a year and probably the hardest hitter in the lineup to replace.

Tampa Bay and Baltimore have their own problems as well. The Rays have a low payroll, but it remains unlikely that the payroll will get much of a boost this offseason and they need a couple of hitters. GM Andrew Friedman is one of the best in baseball at retooling a team on the fly, but that always leaves the risk of ending up like Lucille Ball in that famous "I Love Lucy" clip of the comedienne working at a conveyor belt. And whether you attribute Baltimore's 93-win season to luck, mojo or some combination of Orioles Magic and pit beef, it's hard to deny that Cinderella teams have a strong tendency in baseball to be disappointing the following season.

Add up what the Jays have and what they gained today and you're looking at a team with a mean expectation for wins somewhere in the high 80s or low 90s. The Jays wove straw into gold today and this time, it wasn't just a fairy tale. AL East, you have been warned.

[Greg1983Returns]

last post itt before the trade

i lold

I fail.

Already booked my flight from Van City to Toronto for October.

We back baby!

Good to see you still lurking once in a while bro. Should have thought to get ahold of you last time I was out there. Next time!

[ericb14]

****in sick trade...cant wait till next year already lol

[frankbink5]

I am ready for next year, the team is looking great with the addition of Melky

[JesseV87]

I am ready for next year, the team is looking great with the addition of Melky

This is legitimately one of the best teams in baseball.

[Greg1983Returns]

Dream team.

[frankbink5]

And Rosenthal was saying they were still looking for another starter this morning. It might not be over

[canuckathlete]

A healthy Bautista just won MVP.

Reyes and Cabrera getting on base, EE providing protection.

50hr 150rbi

[Jyeatbvg]

Gearing up to see all of the bandwagoners on my ********. Already starting, people who never mentioned baseball in their life saying sh!t like "OMG 2 batting champs on one team!" ...fuk

[frankbink5]

Cabrera a worthwhile gamble for Jays
Keith Law

The Toronto Blue Jays appeared to be done after the big, expensive trade with the Miami Marlins earlier this week, but I'm guessing GM Alex Anthopoulos couldn't pass on a good deal when he saw one, reportedly signing Melky Cabrera to a two-year, $16 million deal that's under half of what Cabrera would have made had he not failed a PED test in July.

Cabrera is a contact hitter whose value has jumped in the last two years because more of the balls he has put into play have fallen in for hits. He's not selective, with modest walk rates, and he doesn't have much power. But he has very good plate coverage and generates lots of line drives (which are very likely to become hits) and ground balls (more likely than fly balls to become hits). For Toronto, he'll play left field, where he should have average range and add value with his arm. He was dogged by makeup questions even beyond the failed test, but those things tend to disappear when you're playing well.

The Cabrera signing also gives the Jays cover to send Anthony Gose to Triple-A Buffalo this year. Gose is a plus runner and fielder who has made big swing adjustments but is still too impatient and struggles badly to pick up breaking stuff; a Triple-A stint will allow him to develop in a sane hitter's environment. The net gain for Toronto is probably in the range of three wins over the passel of mediocrities the team used in left field during 2011 -- more if Cabrera can pick up where he left off in 2012, which I doubted even before his suspension became public.

I generally avoid being too involved in analyzing the specific salaries involved in free-agent deals because the dollar value of a player's production is tied to things we don't or can't know, like how much an extra win is worth to that specific franchise, or roughly how many games the team is going to win in each season of the contract.

Every team has its own revenue function: wins determine revenues, but one extra win is worth more to the Baltimore Orioles than it is to the Tampa Bay Rays, but probably less than it is to the Los Angeles Dodgers -- and a team's 75th win is likely to be worth less than the same franchise's 90th win. The Blue Jays look like a team that's going to win 85-plus games, so the wins Cabrera likely provides will be worth a lot, but the variance in his performance makes it a little tricky.

Just using Fangraphs' WAR for a shortcut, the version of Cabrera we have seen in his career, up to and including his disastrous 2010 season in Atlanta, wasn't worth close to the $8 million a year he'll receive from Toronto in each year of the new contract. The Blue Jays are betting that the previous version of Cabrera is gone and that he can at least be something close to what he was in 2011, when he had his first of two big jumps in his BABIP (from .288 to .322) and was worth just over four wins above replacement, a number that would make him a bargain at his salary.

His BABIP jumped again (to .379) in 2012, but that isn't going to be taken seriously because he was caught using testosterone. However, if he suddenly becomes, say, a .350 BABIP guy with no other change in his skills, the Jays just got an All-Star on the clearance rack. A 10 percent chance of that, plus maybe a 40 percent chance that he can perform as he did in 2011, and say only a 25 percent chance that he goes back to being a waste of a roster spot almost certainly adds up to more than $8 million in expected value for the Blue Jays -- unless the whole team tanks or the value of a win to Toronto is far lower than I think it is.

[Mac_xX]

LOL at John Farrel

[JamieEasonsJaw]

LOL at John Farrel

Exactly. How's that first choice panning out for you, John?

[CheeseSteak]

anyone know when will the trade with Miami be completed? it's still "pending MLB's approval"

[dabigMV]

anyone know when will the trade with Miami be completed? it's still "pending MLB's approval"

became official this afternoon.

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/news...s_tor&c_id=tor

[shawty321]

HUGE FUKKING JINX!!

brb bautista on 15 day IR fuk this season boys. a season that starts out with so much promise... this is the worst team ive seen in years. BRB 2 world series titles BRB next 20 years cant even get in the goddam postseason


yes mad.
yes irate.
im sick of this sh!t.


also on a side note (not the sole reason for my anger).. i lost 100$ betting on these queers. why can't canada have ONE good sports franchise

oh lawd how things can change

[GingerBrah]

We bake

[Jattfusion]

anyone know when will the trade with Miami be completed? it's still "pending MLB's approval"

became official this afternoon.

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/news...s_tor&c_id=tor

its fukin official lol

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=tor

Blue Jays' 12-player deal with Marlins official

shyt finally will get reall!!!!

[Screwball27]

John Gibbons. Interesting.

http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=409899

Who's he going to pick a fight with this time?

[LiftLaughLust]

John Gibbons. Interesting.

http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=409899

Who's he going to pick a fight with this time?

Reyes and possibly Lawrie

[CheeseSteak]

John Gibbons. Interesting.



Who's he going to pick a fight with this time?

oh lawd. i forgot about that

[JDLEAF]

Gibbons is bake!

[badabing81]

over/under on jays wins next year: 90

[shawty321]

John Gibbons. Interesting.

http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=409899

Who's he going to pick a fight with this time?

shea hillenbrand was the biggest goof in jays history... same with lilly